Disable Smilies in This Post. Show Signature: include your profile signature. Only registered users may have signatures.

*If HTML and/or UBB Code are enabled, this means you can use HTML and/or UBB Code in your message.

If you have previously registered, but forgotten your password, click here.

T O P I C R E V I E W

Robert Pearlman

Soyuz TMA-09M ready for launch

Soyuz TMA-09M commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos, Expedition 36/37 flight engineer Karen Nyberg of NASA, and flight engineer Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency (ESA) are set to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday (May 28) at 3:31 p.m. CDT (2031 GMT; 2:31 a.m. local time May 29), from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

They will dock their Soyuz to the Earth-facing port of the station's Rassvet module at 9:17 p.m. CDT (0217 GMT May 29) following an expedited four-orbit rendezvous.

About two hours later, the hatches between Soyuz TMA-09M and station will open and Yurchikhin Nyberg and Parmitano will be greeted by ISS Expedition 36 commander Pavel Vinogradov, flight engineer Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos and flight engineer Chris Cassidy of NASA, who have been on board the orbiting laboratory since late March.

Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano will stay on the station until mid-November. Cassidy, Vinogradov and Misurkin will return to Earth in mid-September, leaving Yurchikhin as Expedition 37 commander.

On Sunday (May 26), the Soyuz-FG rocket topped with the Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft was rolled out to the launch pad by train and erected into position.

In preparation for their launch, the Soyuz TMA-09M crew attended the final meeting with the Russian State Commission and took part in a press conference at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday (May 27).

Robert Pearlman

Soyuz TMA-09M launches for space station

Expedition 36 flight engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin, Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano launched Tuesday (May 28) at 3:31 p.m. CDT (2031 GMT; 2:31 a.m. local time May 29) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The three new International Space Station (ISS) crew members lifted off on board Russia's Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft beginning an expedited six-hour, four-orbit mission to the outpost.

They are set to dock to the station's Rassvet mini-research module at 9:17 p.m. CDT (0217 GMT May 29). Expedition 36 commander Pavel Vinogradov and flight engineers Alexander Misurkin and Christopher Cassidy will welcome their new crewmates aboard the space station.

Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano are scheduled to live and work aboard the orbiting laboratory until mid-November. They will become members of the ISS Expedition 37 crew under Yurchikhin's command when Vinogradov, Misurkin and Cassidy undock the Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft in September.

The International Space Station received an express delivery of three new crew members Tuesday evening (May 28), a Russian, an American and an Italian, as their spacecraft docked to the orbiting laboratory less than six hours after their departure from Earth.

Cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin with the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos commanded the Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft that flew NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano with the European Space Agency to join the station's 36th expedition. The orbital complex has been continuously manned with a resident crew of two to six astronauts and cosmonauts since November 2000.

The trio launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 3:31 p.m. CDT (2031 GMT; 2:31 a.m. local May 29), lighting up the night sky over Kazakhstan. They docked to the space station's Rassvet mini-research module at 9:10 p.m. CDT (0210 GMT May 29).

Robert Pearlman

Soyuz TMA-09M moved to set stage for next crew

Three International Space Station crew members took their Soyuz for a spin around the block on Friday (Nov. 1) as they prepare for a busy final week for Expedition 37.

Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and flight engineers Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano undocked their Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft from the Rassvet module on the Earth-facing side of the station at 3:33 a.m. CDT (0833 GMT).

After backing the vehicle a safe distance away, Yurchikhin rotated the Soyuz and began the flyaround to the rear of the station. Carefully aligning the spacecraft with the docking port on the aft end of the Zvezda service module, which was vacated by the European Space Agency's fourth Automated Transfer Vehicle on Monday, Yurchikhin guided the spacecraft in for its docking at 3:54 a.m. CDT.

Coincidentally, Yurchikhin was also at the helm for the last Soyuz relocation at the station in June 2010 when he piloted the Expedition 24 crew's Soyuz TMA-19 vehicle from Zvezda to the then newly installed Rassvet module.

Friday's Soyuz move sets the stage for the launch and arrival of a trio of new station crew members — NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin – who will dock their Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft to Rassvet on Nov. 7 about six hours after their launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Three crew members, a Russian, an American and a European, returned to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) Sunday night (Nov. 10), accompanied by a toy dinosaur created in space and the Olympic torch that will begin the 2014 Winter Games.

Roscosmos cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, Karen Nyberg of NASA and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Luca Parmitano landed aboard the Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft in the steppe of Kazakhstan, southeast of Dzhezkazgan, at 8:49 p.m. CST (1449 GMT or 8:49 a.m. local time, Nov. 11).